Parts
of the Violin Bow

Adjusting
and Preparing your bow:

1.
The
screw tightens the frog so that the hair has tautness. Be careful
to not overtighten your bow. The hair should have a slight bounce
to it without touching the stick after placing it on the strings.

2.
When you first attempt to apply rosin on a new bow, you'll have
to go through a priming process. Check the rosin out that came with
your violin...you'll have to make sure that it has some powder on
the surface. Usually, a new cake will be too slick to apply to the
hair. To correct this, take a small pocketknife and crosshatch the
rosin so that there will be some texture to the cake. You can also
roughen the surface of the rosin cake with some sandpaper. After
this, slowly draw the hair over the rosin cake from the frog to
the tip of the bow. Be careful not to draw the bow too quickly which
would cause some friction. On a new bow, you may have to repeat
this process approximately 5-10 minutes...test the bow off and on
to detemine of the rosin is adhering to the hair. If it is, you'll
start to hear a clear pitch emitted as the bow is drawn over the
strings. if your bow happens to have already been used, you only
need to apply the rosin a few times. Try placing the bow on your
strings and play a few notes open. If there appears to be slipping
(which means that the rosin is not assisting the hair in grabbing
the strings...you'll also notice that there will be no tone or volume
emitting from the strings with slippage), and the bow is not grabbing
the strings enough to generate a tone, try applying more rosin.
Follow this process repeatedly until the bow no longer slides on
the strings, and you're getting a clear tone. If you start to hear
a scratchy tone, instead of a nice clear tone, you may have applied
too much rosin. If so, simply play until the rosin slowly wears
off. There's a happy medium you're trying to attain when applying
rosin. Listen for a nice clear tone as the bow draws on the strings.
If there's a whispering tone, or no tone at all, add more rosin.
If there's a clear tone, you should have the optimal level of rosin
on the bow. If there's a scratchy tone, stop applying your rosin
and start playing.

3.
When returning your bow to its case, after your practice session
is over, be sure to loosen the screw so that the hair is no longer
taut....this saves unnecessary tension on the stick when the fiddle
is not in use.